Benton hits 37.87 g/t Au at Quinlan Zone, 79.1 g/t Au at Rickirb, Dominion

Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 8, 2026) - Benton Resources Inc. (TSXV: BEX) ("Benton" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has received the first channel sample results from its Quinlan trenches. Highlights include 6.59 g/t Au over 6.0 m, including 37.87 g/t Au over 1.0 m on Line 2 and 3.84 g/t Au over 5.0 m including 18.28 g/t Au over 1.0 m on Line 1. The Quinlan #1 trench is located approximately 100 m west of the 2025 prospecting area, where surface samples returned up to 10.8 g/t Au. At the 10 Grammer trench, the Company received 1.95 g/t Au over 0.8 m, and 396 ppb Au over 0.8 m in channel sampling; however, sampling was limited by the local topography.

In addition, Benton is pleased to announce that further sampling at the Rickirb #3 trench has returned high-grade visible gold-bearing grab samples that assayed 79.1 g/t Au and 15.2 g/t Au. These results are highly encouraging at such an early stage of discovery and underscore the strong potential of the system with continued sampling and evaluation.

To date, Benton's Dominion Project has delivered exceptional results with 159 channel sample results still outstanding at Ellie, Rickirb and Quinlan.

The new Quinlan Gold discovery represents another significant advancement of the Dominion Project, showing the vast potential of the Tulks Volcanic Belt in Central Newfoundland. Quinlan sits approximately 6.4 km from the new Rickirb Gold Zone and 20 km by road from Equinox Gold's Valentine Gold Mine.

Benton's news release on September 10, 2026, announced the first significant gold discovery from channel sampling at the Rickirb gold zone delivering highlights of 1.80 g/t Au over 11.2 m including 6.36 g/t Au over 3.0 m and 10.58 g/t Au over 1.0 m, 8.00 g/t Au over 2.0 m, including 30.53 g/t Au over 0.5 m and 4.20 g/t Au over 3.7 m, including 15.29 g/t Au over 0.9 m. The Rickirb gold zone remains open in all directions. Both the Rickirb and Quinlan gold zones are drill-ready and targeting is in progress.

Figure 1: Dominion Property Trenching Map. 

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